HAARP causes clouds like the one pictured to form.
HAARP doesn’t produce water in the atmosphere and does not interact with existing clouds, so had nothing to do with the cloud pictured. Although the cloud type is slightly rare, it has been categorised for decades and photographed many times.
An image of a man pointing at clouds with the caption “Angels don’t play this HAARP” has been shared over 700 times on Facebook.
This seems to be implying that HAARP, which stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a research facility for the study of parts of the Earth’s upper atmosphere and located in Alaska, is responsible for the clouds in the image.
Despite false claims to the contrary, HAARP cannot control the weather or interact with clouds.
According to the facility: “Radio waves in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere—the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth’s weather. Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather.”
The associate director at Boston College’s Institute for Scientific Research, Keith Groves, previously told USA Today: “There is no credible mechanism by which HAARP can modify the weather or the neutral atmosphere in any detectable way”.
He added: “Claims of this type are completely unfounded. They are sensational, but neither serious nor scientific.”
HAARP also says the facility “doesn’t produce water in the atmosphere, has no capability to release gases or liquids, and does not interact with existing water in clouds.”
Clouds similar to the one pictured have been photographed many times before.
Even the highest clouds don’t reach the altitudes of the thermosphere or ionosphere, which HAARP exists to study.
HAARP’s website also points out that the ionospheric storms in the upper atmosphere caused by the sun don’t affect weather on the Earth’s surface, “there is no chance that HAARP can either”.
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The facility exists to study the ionosphere, which contains free electrons and ions that the radio waves it emits can interact with. Its website calls the HAARP system “basically a large radio transmitter”.
It goes on to say: “HAARP radio waves heat the electrons and create small perturbations that are similar to the kinds of interactions that happen in nature.
“Natural phenomena are random and are often difficult to observe. With HAARP, scientists can control when and where the perturbations occur so they can measure their effects. In addition, they can repeat experiments to confirm the measurements really show what researchers think they do.”
HAARP’s “principal instrument” is called the Ionosphere Research Instrument, 180 antennas spread across 33 acres. Initially, the technology was used to “enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes”. The facility was previously managed by the US Air Force and Navy but in 2015, responsibility for it was transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
We’ve seen other false claims recently that HAARP created natural disasters after being ‘tested on’ specific countries, and that it was responsible for recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. People have been making similarly false claims for over a decade.
Image courtesy of GerritR
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the post implies HAARP has something to do with the clouds pictured, which it does not.
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